Over 227,000 Ukrainian children attend Polish schools, around 4,500 applicants took NMT – Butenko. PHOTOS
More than 227,000 Ukrainian citizens are attending Polish schools in the 2026/2027 academic year. Preserving the Ukrainian language and culture among children who fled abroad because of the war was one of the topics discussed at a meeting between Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science Andrii Butenko and Poland’s Minister of National Education Barbara Nowacka in Lviv.
Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science Andrii Butenko reported this, according to Censor.NET.
According to him, Polish schools have been able to offer Ukrainian as a second foreign language since September 2025. In 2026, around 450 pupils took Poland’s school-leaving examination, the matura, in Ukrainian as a foreign language.
In addition, nearly 4,500 Ukrainian applicants took the National Multi-subject Test (NMT) this year at temporary examination centres set up in nine Polish cities.
How many children study Polish in Ukraine
According to the minister, more than 107,000 pupils study Polish at 577 educational institutions in Ukraine. This is 16% more than in the 2021/2022 academic year.
Since 2023, 51 textbook titles in Polish for pupils in grades 5–8 have been published with funding from Ukraine’s state budget.
Since 2024, applicants have also been able to receive NMT questions translated into Polish, except for subjects in the language and literature component.
During the Polish minister’s visit, the officials visited lyceums in Lviv where children from the Polish community study in their native language and spoke with teachers and pupils.
Together, they opened the Second All-Ukrainian Congress on Teaching Methodology for Polish Language Teachers.
Butenko stressed that Ukraine seeks to uphold the rights of national minorities in line with European standards while also protecting the educational rights of Ukrainian children abroad.
The minister also thanked the Polish side for supporting Ukrainian schoolchildren and helping organise the NMT.
